Crash knocks out power in Hancock County — ‘It’s like God picked up the Jeep and launched it at the telephone pole’

A car drives past where a Jeep crashed early Wednesday morning into a utility pole in Trenton as three workers with Emera Maine work to reconnect power lines to a new pole. The crash resulted in Route 3 being shut down and nearly 1,200 Emera customers losing power for several hours.

TRENTON, Maine — A man has been taken to an Ellsworth hospital for treatment after a Jeep he was driving crashed into a utility pole on Route 3 early Wednesday morning, resulting in power being disconnected to nearly 1,200 Emera Maine customers, according to officials.

The accident occurred around 3:15 a.m. directly in front of the Acadia Weathervanes cupola workshop on the highway. More than six hours later, after the vehicle had been towed away, only one lane of Route 3 was open to alternating directions of traffic and eight utility trucks, including some from Time Warner Cable and Fairpoint Communications, were in the process of restoring service to nearby customers.

Deputy Travis Frost of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, said a Jeep crashed into the pole and the driver then allegedly fled the scene on foot. He said that the driver turned up around 8:30 a.m. at the Trenton Marketplace supermarket and then was taken to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth for treatment.

Frost declined to release the man’s name, saying that the case is still under investigation and that the man has not yet been charged, though charges are pending. He said the road was shut down completely for about five hours while police investigated and emergency responders cleaned up the accident scene.

Dorothy Gordon lives directly across the highway from where the accident occurred and said the “huge” noise of the impact woke her up. She said by the time she got outside, the driver was gone.

The dark-colored Jeep smashed through a utility pole on the west side of the road and rolled a few times before coming to rest on its wheels up against another pole to the north, Gordon said. She surmised the Jeep must have been coming from the Bar Harbor direction when it went off the road.

“It’s like God picked up the Jeep and launched it at the telephone pole,” Gordon said.

Debris lay in the gutter Wednesday morning where the Jeep came to rest as utility crews worked nearby. Cassette audio tapes, black waiter aprons, a pair of black pants, a broken pint glass with “Vacationland” printed on it, socks, a boot, a maul and a stick of Old Spice deodorant were among the items clustered by the side of the road.

In a press release, Emera Maine said that nearly 1,200 customers had their power disconnected while repair crews replaced the broken utility pole. Customers affected included residents of Bar Harbor, Ellsworth, Sullivan and Trenton, the company indicated. Power was restored to all affected customers by around 8:45 a.m., according to Emera spokesman Bob Potts.